The products that are released as part of Ordnance Survey Free will continue to bemaintained by Ordnance Survey to a high and consistent standard. The product setmay evolve over time.

Ordnance Survey Free is intended to allow communities to combine (or “mash-up”)government data about their community and environment from a number of sourcesand illustrate their findings in a geographic context:

The raster products will enable developers to produce an application that overlaystheir information on a map and to zoom-in from a national view with MiniScaledown to the street level with OS Street Viev, the gazetteer, boundary and postcode information will enable widespread use.

These commonly used geographies and it will act as a link between othergovernment data sets which reference the same geographythe 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer provides a definitive source of town and place.

names to search and locate a place of interest on the map

Code-Point provides the location of every postcode to enable accurate search and display of specific locations and it will link to other data with a postcode reference

• Boundary-Line provides the outline and a unique reference to all theadministrative and electoral units of Great Britain.

• Meridian2 and Strategi are small scale vector products which provide thegeometry of features to allow customisation and combination with other data.Meridian 2 includes a full named and attributed road network.Issues - none is there?

Issues highlighted by Ordnance Survey:The most immediate impact on Ordnance Survey as a result of the release ofOrdnance Survey Free products will be the reduction in revenues.Three different types of existing and future revenue loss have been identified, and their potential impact on Ordnance Survey quantified.These include: direct revenue impacts as a result of the loss of revenue from the products to be released for free; product substitution affecting Ordnance Survey’s remaining products, which will arise as customers switch to Ordnance Survey Free products; and increased competition impacts as competitors are able to derive their own products from the OrdnanceSurvey Free products.

The estimated that the revenue loss to Ordnance Survey from a combination ofthese three effects would be £19-24m p.a. Further growth was anticipated in theseproducts, which could now be foregone.

The provision of Ordnance Survey Free datasets and associated services has beenassessed on the basis of avoidable cash costs at £6-8m p.a. over the next five years,including both the operating costs and on-going investments required for theseproducts. In addition there would be one-off development costs for data provision ofup to £1.1m.